Victory Point - Ed Darack [150]
HMMWV: The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, aka the Humvee, was used both to transport troops and for CAAT—an acronym for Combined Anti-Armor Team. Although the enemy didn’t have any armored anything for the CAATs to engage, ⅔ utilized the concept for convoy escort and troop support. ⅔ configured each CAAT Humvee with either an MK19 automatic grenade launcher and an M240G medium machine gun, an M2 .50-caliber machine gun, or an M220A3 TOW (Tube Launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missile), an antitank weapon that can be used to destroy structures.
MTVR: Officially known as the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement; Marines know this vehicle as the 7-Ton (it replaced the 5-Ton, hence the word replacement in its official designation). Relatively fast, highly survivable (particularly to IEDs, because at its high clearance), off-road capable, powerful, and able to carry tons of cargo and troops, the 7-Ton was nonetheless limited to a few main routes throughout ⅔’s area of operation because of the tortuous and narrow profiles of most secondary roads in the Kunar. ⅔’s 7-Tons typically had an M240G mounted on their turret (above the cab of the truck), but Marines could mount MK19s as well as M2s, if the mission required.
AIRCRAFT
A-10 Thunderbolt II: Flown extensively in support of ground troops in Operation Red Wings and Operation Whalers; pilots of the A-10 (known to most by its nickname, the Warthog) relied primarily on the aircraft’s devastatingly powerful GAU-8 30 mm rotary cannon for their close air support attacks. While the GAU-8, the business end of which juts out of the aircraft’s nose like a blunt stinger, can fire a variety of projectiles, pilots shot high-explosive incendiary (HEI) rounds during Red Wings and Whalers. At 3,900 rounds per minute, even the standard one- to two-second burst put the equivalent of 65 to 130 grenade explosions into a tight swath. The A-10 also can carry a large assortment of rocket pods, air-to-ground guided missiles, and an assortment of unguided as well as precision bombs.
AC-130: The infamous Spectre/Spooky gunships of the Air Force Special Operations Squadrons aided Marines on the ground during Red Wings and Whalers both kinetically (with the onboard 105 mm howitzer and suite of high-speed rotary and Bofors guns) and with the platform’s high-precision-imagery capabilities—helping troops locate enemy positions at night.
B-52: A massive, versatile platform, the B-52 Stratofortress delivered GPG-guided JDAM munitions for the Marines during Operation Whalers.
C-130 Hercules: Invaluable for providing resupply airdrops to troops on the ground; these drops nonetheless required incredibly detailed coordination to ensure that the cargo, dropped by parachute (called a CDS, or containerized delivery system), didn’t land hundreds of meters (or more) distant from the intended target—which in the steep mountains of the Kunar can mean many more hundreds of meters of elevation troops needed to climb or descend to get to their needed supplies.
AH-64 Apache: Crewed by two Army aviators, the Apache gunship provided Marines of ⅔ invaluable close air support during both Red Wings and Whalers. With a 30 mm M230 cannon—aimed through a reticle mounted to a pilot’s helmet—Apaches, controlled by Marine forward air controllers, laid waste to numerous enemy targets in the summer of 2005 in the Kunar. The Apache can be loaded with a wide variety of other weapons systems as well, including 70 mm (2.75 inch) unguided Hydra rockets (employed extensively during Red Wings and Whalers) and the Hellfire laser-guided missile.
UH-60